April 17, 2013

Cotton Club BOM

Just a quick post today....

When I was on my retreat a couple of months ago, I finished my Cotton Club quilt top. In October, 2012, I blogged how I had the center part done. You can see that post here. (It's pretty amazing how much darker the quilt looks in the photo above than in my previous posts. These outer borders really darken it up!) All it needed were the three outer borders (the small dark brown one, the small white one, and the very wide striped one). I took this project on retreat and was determined to finish it there. It's much easier to do this at retreat, where you can lay it out without (a) having to run upstairs all the time to lay it out, or (b) lay it out downstairs and have dog hair all over it. (Our dog stays downstairs.)

I'm pretty happy with it. Those wide outer borders are about 8" wide. They are mitered at the corners. I'm a little worried about them, becuase they look a little "ruffly" to me. I hope they work out okay.

So, I finished it a couple of months ago, but I didn't send it off for quilting yet. I still needed a back for it. I was waiting until I could get up to the Attic Window to shop for backing. Chris always has a nice selection of sale fabrics at the Attic Window. (In some shops, I look at the sale rack, and I can see why the fabrics are there...they aren't very attractive. But Chris always has beautiful fabrics on her sale rack. I don't think there's a bolt of fabric in her shop I don't like.) I can usually find something that works well. I hit the jackpot last weekend. Look at this perfect Thimbleberries fabric I found on the sale rack!

Here it is with some of my scraps from the front of the quilt. Isn't it perfect?! It was on sale for $5 per yard. I got the entire quilt back fabric for $25....and it's beautiful! I think it's really in keeping with the rest of the quilt, both in color and design style.

When I complimented Chris on this beautiful fabric being in the sale pile, she said, "Yeah, well it's been here a while." She showed me the date on the bolt...2011. I said, "Well, that's about how long ago I started this quilt, so that's about right!" Chris said, "Yeah, and now that this fabric is sold, I can go buy more fabric for the shop!" Right on, sistah. I like how you think.

I got the back pieced last weekend, and it--along with the top--went off to Shelly for quilting. She should be getting it about today. I asked Shelly for a wool batt on this one. I'm very excited to see what she does with this one. She is looking at all the different blocks as a "playground" for quilting.

The borders look great on the quilt Stephanie! Don't you love it when you find the perfect fabric? (What kills me though, is we have these giant stashes and they never contain the perfect fabric LOL.) Can't wait to see what the quilter does with your quilt -- that will be a fun post.
And look! In the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No! It's the sun!!! Do you see it up there? It's hazy here, but it's such a shock to see it -- I jumped out of bed this morning thinking we were late -- it was just the sun after so many days of gloom!

What an awesome quilt and to get such wonderful backing material on sale - what a find! The colors remind me of the quilt I made for our bed last year. I never did find backing material I liked and finally ended up backing it with a heavy weight muslin (I'm partial to good quality mulin there's just something so "quilty" about it). Looking forward to seeing how Shelly quilts it - she always does such awesome work to compliment your beautiful piecing.